The language Guinea-Bissau requires
Guinea-Bissau works in Portuguese. An English birth entry, degree or police check is a foreign sheet to an office there until a Portuguese version sits beside it. Nothing happens to the paper you hold. A second sheet is written, signed, and attached, and the two are meant to be read as a pair.
You order a certified translation into Portuguese in Liverpool and keep the English record where it is. Only the words move. A clerk reads the Portuguese and can lay it against the English to see that every entry, seal and signature has been carried across in the same place.
The marks above and below the letters
Portuguese uses a tilde, an acute, a grave, a circumflex and a cedilla, and none of them is ornament. Each changes how a word sounds and often what it means. Strip them out and you have written something else, which is why a scan that blurs them is sent back before the work starts.
This is also where an official Portuguese translation in Liverpool earns its keep. The marks are set by hand where the source demands them, and the same choice is applied on every sheet in the file. A reader then sees one steady spelling rather than three near-misses of the same name.
Keeping one spelling across a file
English records often flatten a name. An accent that belongs on a grandparent's forename disappears at a British desk, and the sheet you hold shows the plain version. A translator copies what is in front of them, so that plain version lands in the Portuguese unless you say otherwise.
Certification Guinea-Bissau accepts
Behind the Portuguese stands a certified translator, who signs a certificate of accuracy. That page names them, gives their standing and states plainly that the two texts agree. No oath and no court sit behind it, and the signature itself is what a receiving desk checks first.
The rate is about £25 for each page of the source, counted on sheets rather than on words. Standard work takes 2–3 business days from the moment a readable colour scan lands, and 24 hours where a date will not move. A long file still travels at the speed of its page count.
Acceptance in Guinea-Bissau
Nothing you own has to go anywhere. The job runs from an image, so the record stays in your drawer. Births, marriages and deaths registered in this city can be re-ordered as certified copies from Liverpool Register Office, St George's Hall, St George's Place, Liverpool L1 1JJ, and a fresh copy scans better than a worn one.
What travels at the end is the pair. A certified translation for Guinea-Bissau is read against the English sheet it came from, so hand the two over together and keep the accents identical on both. That is what a clerk is really checking for.